After we "Select and Prioritize," then "Define our Archetype," we are now empowered to "Build, Measure and Learn"—this is where the active marketing takes place from our patient's perspective.

Of course, in order for us to know what to go and build, we must have a crystal clear understanding of what the ultimate goal of the marketing effort should be. That's why we go back to the Experience Map and select which Desired Actions will complete the higher level goal (or even sentiment) that was agreed upon at the Quarterly Offsite.

From there, the Marketing Team creates and presents a plan for which levers they believe should be pulled in order to create each of the desired actions.

BUILD

Armed with clear, agreed-upon objectives and methods, the Marketing Team builds and launches their Minimal Viable Product (MVP) along with their first A/B Test as quickly as possible.

MEASURE

After launching their MVPs, each lever's weekly conversion rate is recorded on scorecards which are specific to a Desired Action.

LEARN

On a regular, recurring basis the Marketing Team is responsible for hosting a "Refinement Meeting," where they will present the performance of each lever and variant to their stakeholders, and the group will decide whether the current tests should "pivot or persevere."

This step completes the Build-Measure-Learn Loop, and it continues to repeat itself as many times as possible through the end of the quarter.

"What Should We A/B Test?"

This is a question we ask ourselves over and over again, and we answer it based on two opposing elements: Feelings and Facts.

You could also call these "Intuition" and "Data." Regardless, they are two forces that should create a healthy tension between one another. If one ever wins out over the other, problems will arise.

In order to bring a little order to the chaos, we like to visualize our different funnels to help us start the discussion about what we should A/B test. Here's an example:

This is our "Lead-to-Consult Funnel" for one of our websites. I know it looks overwhelming, but it shows us each of the possible paths that a patient could take in the process of reaching out to us and coming in to meet our team.

By visualizing the funnel, we are able to run an A/B test on any of the arrows.

For example, our team recently started a test on the interaction above where they created the following hypothesis: "If we will simplify the email we send to patients who we have not been able to connect with, they will be more likely to respond."

Here is an example of the emails we had been sending:

Here's the email we tested against our "Champion Variant:"

And here were the results:

Although this dataset is too small to make final decisions from (currently, the test is still running), I'll take a 9% increase any day!

Written by Robbie Poe

Robbie Poe has a passion for helping others win in business and has been leading teams for more than a decade. He was a hand-selected member of Dave Ramsey’s senior leadership team where he was responsible for a $25MM a year product line, and he consulted for a year with our practice’s leadership team before joining full time as our COO / Integrator.